Ukraine war briefing: Russian drone factory attacked, 1,000km away in Tatarstan
Ukraine's military said on Sunday it had attacked a Russian drone factory in the city of Yelabuga in Russia's Tatarstan region. The target is around 1,000km from Ukraine. The Ukrainian military general staff said the factory produced, tested, and launched drones at Ukraine, in particular against energy and civil infrastructure. Videos on social media showed an explosion said to be at the factory in Yelabuga, also known as Alabuga, which builds Iranian-designed Shahed drones. The Russian local governor confirmed the attack.
Russian forces hit the Kremenchuk oil refinery in Ukraine's Poltava region with missiles and drones, Russia's defence ministry said on Sunday. Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, denounced the attack on the central Poltava region as a vile strike against Ukrainian energy infrastructure, which he said occurred 'after the Americans asked us not to strike at Russian energy facilities'. Ukrainian officials said the strikes mainly hit energy, agricultural and civilian installations.
Russian forces have advanced in northern Sumy Oblast and near Kupyansk, Siversk, Chasiv Yar, and Toretsk, according to the Institute for the Study of War. Russia's defence ministry claimed on Sunday that its forces had taken control of the village of Malynivka in the Donetsk region, known in Russia as Ulyanovka. Zelenskiy said on Saturday that Ukrainian forces had recaptured Andriivka village in north-eastern Sumy as part of a drive to expel Russian forces from the area. Neither side's claims were independently confirmed.
The Ukrainian office for the return of prisoners of war confirmed on Sunday that Russia had returned 1,200 bodies to Ukraine as part of continuing exchanges.
A building used by Boeing in Kyiv was badly damaged in a recent large-scale Russian air attack, the Financial Times reported on Sunday, citing two Boeing employees, three Ukrainian officials and the head of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine. There had been 'no operational disruption', Andriy Koryagin, deputy general director of Boeing's operation in Ukraine, told the newspaper, and none of its employees were harmed.
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Spectator
43 minutes ago
- Spectator
Mikhail Khodorkovsky: ‘The West isn't ready for Putin's hybrid war'
Mikhail Khodorkovsky is sounding the alarm. The end of the war in Ukraine, whenever it comes, won't mean the end of Vladimir Putin, he says – nor the Russian threat to the West. Moscow, he says, has never been very good at demobilising restless, traumatised soldiers. 'There is a 600,000-strong group that took part in the fighting. The question for Putin is: 'What to do with this group?'. Khodorkovsky fears that he knows the answer. 'These tensions will naturally arise after two or three years,' he says. 'And then Putin's way of thinking kicks into gear. And Putin's mentality? He has already relieved such points of tension four times [during his rule] by starting a war. This is his modus operandi. Not because there are no other options, but because for him this is a habitual model of behaviour.' Putin's is a cult of personality, Khodorkovsky explains, not ideology Khodorkovsky, formerly an oligarch and the wealthiest man in Russia, now an opposition activist and ex-political prisoner living in exile in London, is far from the only person concerned that Europe is unprepared to deal with the ongoing threat Russia will pose over the coming years. At the Nato summit in the Hague last week, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Putin could be ready to attack a member of the alliance in five years' time. 'We believe that, starting from 2030, Putin can have significantly greater capabilities.' Warnings that Russia could launch an attack on a Nato country – most likely one of the Baltic states – have been gathering pace in recent months. The timelines vary, but the consensus is the same: Ukraine won't be the last invasion Putin tries to mount. Putin, Khodorkovsky warns, is already waging a 'hybrid war' against the West. In the years since the invasion of Ukraine, Europe has seen a dramatic surge in Russia-affiliated acts of sabotage: exploding DHL packages, arson attacks carried out on energy substations and warehouses – and even potentially on properties belonging to Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Many of the saboteurs in these cases aren't Russian, seemingly hired unknowingly by the GRU – Russia's foreign intelligence branch – through the internet. This model, Khodorkovsky says, 'is beautiful in its danger'. He compares it to the augmented reality game Pokemon Go, in which players complete virtual challenges, capturing, training and fighting Pokemon, in the real world. 'The GRU took this model and began to give such tasks to all sorts of idiots who, for very little money, do God knows what.' This type of warfare won't end when the last Russian soldier puts down his gun in Ukraine, Khodorkovsky says. 'And I do not know how ready the West is for this.' I met Khodorkovsky at his offices in central London: at 61 he's short in stature, with greying, close-cropped hair and sharp eyes behind silver-rimmed glasses. For someone who speaks with a great deal of authority, he is mild-mannered and surprisingly humble. 'I am not a politician,' he insists. 'A politician is, after all, a person who fights for power.' At various points in our discussion, he reaches for other labels to describe himself: first 'a public figure', then, rather ambiguously, a 'fairly effective manager'. 'Of course,' he concedes, 'I have an idea of how I would like to see Russia in the future.' He is the author of How to Slay a Dragon: Building a New Russia After Putin, which he once described as a 'detailed breakdown of the steps that can lead us to that bright future'. In 2017, he also launched the Dossier Centre, a non-profit investigative outfit which tracks the criminal activity of Kremlin associates. Khodorkovsky knows what he's talking about when it comes to Putin. A former economic advisor to Boris Yeltsin, he remembers being informed in the late 90s that his boss was lining up the young director of the FSB – Russia's domestic intelligence service – to become the country's prime minister, and eventually his successor as president. 'If we had understood what all this would lead to, then we probably would have been up in arms. But we couldn't sense that then.' Soon enough, Khodorkovsky – by then, amongst other things, owner of the multimillion-dollar oil and gas company Yukos – began meeting with Putin personally. 'When I first met him, he made a very pleasant impression on me. He certainly does a good job in that sense, a truly talented person. That is, when you start communicating with him, you feel that you're on the same wavelength.' The honeymoon wasn't to last. In February 2003, Khodorkovsky fell foul of Russia's president. At a televised meeting with business leaders at the Kremlin, Khodorkovsky – by some reports now well on his way to becoming the world's richest man – dared to challenge Putin on the full scale of systemic corruption in the country. 'This is when,' Khodorkovsky says matter-of-factly, 'all the fun began'. Eight months later, Khodorkovsky was arrested on charges of fraud and tax evasion. The Kremlin froze shares in Yukos, dissolving much of Khodorkovsky's wealth with its subsequent collapse. A eight-year jail sentence followed in 2005, before he was subjected to a second trial in 2009 on charges of embezzlement and sentenced to a further 14 years in prison. Khodorkovsky has always maintained that the charges against him were politically motivated – indeed, his experiences fit the pattern of what would soon become widely recognised as the playbook by which Putin punishes his critics. In 2013, Putin unexpectedly pardoned Khodorkovsky, freeing him that December. He left Russia, spending a year in Zurich while his children finished school, before settling in London in 2015. 'London, for me as a person who was born and raised in Moscow, is more familiar,' he explains. But a presidential pardon didn't mean he was free from the Kremlin. Men he suspects were 'Putin's jokesters' would harass him: 'They would stand here opposite the office, take pictures, brazenly follow me from home to work.' Some, he says, would even try and film him using drones. The police did what they could, but it was only after the war in Ukraine broke out that the harassment really stopped: the British government's expulsion of many Russian diplomats effectively dismantled the Kremlin's network of goons. The prospect of an end to the war in Ukraine currently seems further away than ever. Donald Trump's administration has been keen to thaw relations with the Kremlin, raising concerns among Ukraine's other allies over whether Putin will ever face a reckoning for his illegal invasion. And yet, even the Russian president won't be able to live forever. 'Who will replace Putin, no one can tell you that today. But it is certain that his initial replacement will come from within his entourage,' Khodorkovsky says. 'But then it is clear that the probability that the new person will preserve Putin's power structure is simply zero.' Putin's is a cult of personality, he explains, not ideology. This will make his regime difficult to continue after his death. The West will then face a choice of whether to bring Russia in from the cold, or push it further into China's arms, he adds. The next decade will be pivotal for Russia, Khodorkovsky believes. It will, he says, almost certainly involve some kind of 'violent confrontation'. But what of him? Does Khodorkovsky hope to see his homeland again? 'Without a doubt, I certainly want to have the opportunity, but what I will be ready to do depends on time.' He adds, 'Revolutionary changes, and they will at the very least themes of revolution – these are still the business of the young.'
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Ukraine pilot killed, F-16 fighter jet lost, Ukrainian military says
KYIV, June 29 (Reuters) - A Ukrainian pilot was killed and his F-16 fighter jet lost while repelling a large-scale Russian nighttime missile and drone attack, the Ukrainian military said on Sunday. It was the third such loss of an F-16 of the war, the military said. "The pilot used all of his onboard weapons and shot down seven air targets. While shooting down the last one, his aircraft was damaged and began to lose altitude," the Air Force said on the Telegram messaging app.
Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
Russia's summer offensive is ‘fizzling out'
Russia's summer offensive in Ukraine is faltering just weeks after it began, despite a record number of attacks across multiple fronts. Data analysis by The Telegraph shows Moscow is on track to break its own record, which was set last month, for offensive operations in June. Yet the sheer volume of assaults has not translated into meaningful breakthroughs on the battlefield. The offensive – launched in May but planned over the winter – stretches from the northern border regions of Sumy and Kharkiv to the front lines in Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk, into which Russian forces are attempting to break for the first time. Moscow spent the winter months building up manpower, refining tactics and improving the co-ordination of missile and drone strikes. At first, there were signs it was paying off. In May, Russian forces advanced at the fastest pace seen since last November, gaining an average of 5.5 square miles a day – double the rate of April, according to DeepState, a Ukrainian open-source intelligence project that tracks territorial changes. Steady gains were made in the Donetsk region, especially between Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka, two of Moscow's key targets. But several weeks into the campaign, momentum is slipping. 'The capacity to start something new and distinct really isn't there for the Russians right now. The summer offensive is just going to be the continuation of what they've been doing in spring,' Angelica Evans, a Russia analyst at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), told The Telegraph. In Sumy, Russian forces appear to have stalled entirely. Having re-entered the region in January and intensified their push this spring, Moscow's troops have failed to make further gains. Instead, Ukraine has recaptured some territory. Pavlo Narozhny, a Ukrainian military analyst from Sumy, told The Telegraph that Russia's main target in the region has been Yunakivka, which lies directly on the road that connects Russia to the centre of Sumy. Should Russia manage to take the town, it would then move on to nearby villages on the edge of a large forest. This, Mr Narozhny said, would be a 'disaster' for Ukraine, adding: 'The forest leads right up to Sumy city, so if they manage to bring in artillery to Yunakivka and into the forest, they can reach Sumy city with artillery.' Despite heavy fighting, Ukraine has managed to slow down Russia's advances in the region, according to the ISW, which said Russia was sending out thousands of poorly-trained soldiers to lead the advance – a pattern seen across the front line. 'The Russian offensive has broadly stalled … They have the advantage in manpower and drones but their infantry is very poorly trained, if at all,' a senior Ukrainian NCO, who is fighting in the Kupiansk direction in Donetsk, told The Telegraph. The campaign in Sumy is part of a wider Russian effort to establish a buffer zone along the border, aimed at deterring Ukrainian drones and cross-border raids. Kyiv used the region as a launchpad for its 2024 incursion into Russia's neighbouring Kursk region. Though the stated aim was to secure the border, Vladimir Putin hinted last week he may be aiming higher. Ukraine's top general said on Thursday that Russian progress in Sumy had been stopped altogether. 'The Russian advance in the Sumy border zone has been stopped as of this week, and the front line has been stabilised,' said Oleksandr Syrsky. Yet while Sumy is a symbolic and strategic target, it is only one part of the summer offensive. Ukrainian officials have said Russia is also trying to breach the border of the Dnipropetrovsk region and continue its push to secure the entire Donbas in the east. 'Russia has really been focused on what we call the Ukrainian fortress belt, which includes Kramatorsk, Kostiantynivka and Sloviansk,' said Ms Evans. 'But they haven't really shown since the first few months of the war to make very rapid and widespread advances they would need to take these cities.' In Donetsk, if Russian forces were able to take Kostiantynivka, a critical Ukrainian logistics hub, it would then pave the way for attacks on Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, taking Putin one step closer to controlling the entire Donbas region. But given the current pace of Russia's assault and the poor training of their men, this is unlikely. 'To take Kramatorsk they would need an additional 100,000 men,' the Ukrainian NCO said. 'They needed 40,000 to take Avdiivka, 70,000 to take Bakhmut, and that included some very well-trained and capable Wagner mercenaries.' Indeed, despite an apparent manpower advantage of up to 20 to one in some sectors, Ukrainian troops defending Kostiantynivka have held their ground. 'Our task is to block their actions,' Captain Filatov told The New York Times, claiming up to 15 Russian assaults are taking place every week. 'The Russians are in a tricky position given the level of attrition they're taking,' said Nick Reynolds, a battlefield expert at the Royal United Services Institute. 'They've been unable to sustain that pressure, due to their stock of refurbishable weapons, specifically artillery and armoured vehicles.' Troops have made some progress north of Toretsk, but urban fighting around the city has slowed the advance. In Pokrovsk, meanwhile, the tempo of attacks remains high but the results are inconclusive. On Thursday, more than a quarter of Ukraine's reported front-line battles took place around the city but no progress was made. 'The Russians haven't taken a city for sometime. They celebrate like Soviet-era wins over these small towns and villages, which don't have any real strategic value,' said Prof Michael Clarke, a security and defence analyst. And with Russia attempting to open up new major fronts in Sumy and Kharkiv, while also trying to push into Dnipropetrovsk, 'any benefit they would have in Donetsk is lost because their forces are overstretched,' he added. Spreading forces thin is a key aspect of Russia's approach, particularly as they fear the style of successful counter-offensives launched by Ukraine in 2022. 'The Russians are risk averse,' said Ms Evans, 'which whittles its way down from Putin.' Stretching their forces around Ukraine also forms part of Russia's 'operational theory of victory' – to achieve the 'systematic collapse' of the Ukrainian army by imposing intense pressure, rather than pushing for a major breakthrough, said Mr Reynolds, adding: 'The Russian forces seem to have accepted that this is just the way that warfare is, even though it's not true.' Despite a general lack of momentum, Russian forces this week have notched one notable success – the seizure of a valuable lithium deposit in western Donetsk. The mine, just outside Shevchenko village, was taken in recent days, according to geolocated footage. Though only 100 acres in size, it is one of Ukraine's richest known lithium reserves. Its loss will be a blow to Kyiv's long-term development goals, especially as it courts Western investment in post-war reconstruction. And while battlefield gains have been slow, Russia has launched a number of devastating attacks on civilians in recent weeks. At least nine people were killed in a Russian missile and drone attack in Kyiv on Monday, while 28 people were killed in a similarly devastating attack on June 17. Meanwhile, Russia launched a deadly missile attack on Dnipro on Tuesday, killing at least 19 people and injuring 300 more, and on Saturday morning a married couple were killed and 17 other people injured in a strike on a residential building in Odesa. Like Russia's tactical decision to spread its forces across Ukraine, rather than in one region, these attacks show that Russia's long-term aim is to take the whole country – not just the four regions it illegally annexed in 2022. 'We have seen a marked intensification of strikes since January 2025 and it's only got worse over the last six months. It's an effort to convince people to leave and to make it easier in the future to seize these cities,' said Ms Evans. 'What eventually we will see is a return to an acknowledgement to take all of Ukraine.'
